Dear Jennifer,
Thank you for the interest and the question. We'd be happy to expand this to include the women's tournament.
For those curious about why we didn't include the women's tournament initially, we discussed it a couple years ago and looked at a number of factors. If memory serves, the factors leading us to use only the men's tournament for the first couple years included respecting staff bandwidth and wanting to be sure there was sufficient interest in the contest.
Thanks again,
Steve
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Steve Pierson
Director of Science Policy
American Statistical Association
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-29-2019 15:17
From: Jennifer Ward
Subject: Statsketball 2019 Student Contest Coming Soon!
Hello!
I read on the webpage for last year (2018) that the contest focused on the Men's NCAA tournament. Can students compete in the contest but with the Women's teams? You might encourage more girls to participate by including the other tournament.
I do plan on having my students enter the contest for extra credit, so I'm excited to read about the details when the come out. :)
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Jennifer Ward
Original Message:
Sent: 01-28-2019 21:14
From: Steve Pierson
Subject: Statsketball 2019 Student Contest Coming Soon!
Statsketball 2019 Student Contest Coming Soon!
For the third year, ASA's student-focused initiative This is Statistics is launching its popular Statsketball Tournament! Through this contest, high school and undergraduate students use statistics to predict results for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
Statsketball consists of two contests. The first contest is the "Pick 'Em": Upset Challenge, where students submit a list of 32 winners for the first-round games. The second contest is the "Build Your Own Bracket": Draft Challenge, where teams have 224 drafts points to assemble a cohort of teams from the seeded participants. Entries for both contests are due by March 14 at 12:00 p.m. ET.
Guidelines, announcements and other details about the contest will be shared at ThisIsStatistics.org/statsketball.
We thank ASA member Mike Lopez for suggesting and designing the contests.
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Steve Pierson
Director of Science Policy
American Statistical Association
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